As the World Wide Web steadily becomes an increasingly more popular gateway for accessing sources of information, entertainment, shopping, and various interactive services to millions of users around the world, information providers which supply such information, entertainment, goods and interactive services via HTML-formatted pages have taken advantage of the captured nature of the Web users who access its Web site by "selling" part of the "real estate" on its pages to advertisers who may advertise products or services that may or may not be related to the content or nature of the site. Currently, many of the pages provided by information providers contain advertising that takes various forms such as banner ads across the top or bottom of a page. Such ads may include scrolled information containing images that change with time. Disadvantageously, from an advertiser's perspective, Web users have a tendency to mentally "tune-out" such advertising as they read or interact with the information displayed on the main work area of a page. Furthermore, by utilizing a portion of the valuable "real estate" on a Web page for advertising, the remaining available work area on the page is reduced from its maximum full-screen capabilities. Techniques currently also exist for streaming both audio and video across the Internet. Such an audio component can be incorporated as part of the information content of a Web page as well as part of the accompanying advertising, thereby leading to a potential conflict between the audio components of each. Also, since the size of the ad itself on the Web page is limited to only a small portion of the entire page, the full capabilities that could be presented to a Web user through that ad cannot be fully deployed for their maximum visual impact. An example of the latter is holographic 3D experiences that are currently evolving on the Web.
Technologies currently exist which deliver information and advertising to users through a screen saver during periods in which the user is not accessing the Web, or not using his or her terminal for other purposes. The user, however, may not be there to see the information when it is downloaded. Thus, as with a television commercial which more often than not is presented to an empty room or to a disinterested viewer, advertising on the Web as it is currently presented to a user are not likely to achieve the advertiser's desired impact.